My personal rules of thumb for Pre-I stuff are as follows:
Create events that do two things:
1) Prepare the associate members for the lessons they are about to learn.
2) Bond the brotherhood together (not the AM class, but the entire chapter).
Eliminate events that do two things:
1) Foreshadow the ritual.
2) Separate the associate members from the brotherhood.
I agree with someone's earlier post when they advised you to contact your ELC. The General Fraternity has worked a lot lately to create/adopt/adapt Pre-I lessons that are meaningful and really quite symbolic. I'd advise you to go
this route.
Yours in Z A X ,